2017 Lake Victoria | MacIntyre Africa Great Lakes Sailing Expedition MacIntyre Africa Great Lakes Sailing Expedition (Image credit: Wiki ) Named after Queen Victoria by the explorer John Hanning Speke, who was the first European to discover it, and which he did alone in 1858 while on an expedition with Richard Francis Burton to locate the source of the Nile River . It is the world’s 2nd largest freshwater lake by surface area; only Lake Superior in North America is larger. In terms of its volume, Lake Victoria is the world’s ninth largest continental lake. Lake Victoria occupies a shallow depression in Africa and receives its water primarily from direct precipitation (80%) and thousands of small streams . The largest stream flowing into this lake is the Kagera River , the mouth of which lies on the lake’s western shore. It is drained solely by the Nile River near Jinja, Uganda , on the lake’s northern shore. Average evaporation on the lake is between 2.0 and 2.2 metres per year, almost double the precipitation of riparian areas During its geological history it has gone through changes ranging from its present shallow depression, through to what may have been a series of much smaller lakes.

Geological cores taken from its bottom show Lake Victoria has dried up completely at least three times since it formed. These drying cycles are probably related to past ice ages, which were times when precipitation declined globally. Lake Victoria last dried out 17,300 years ago, and it refilled beginning about 14,700 years ago. Geologically, Lake Victoria is relatively young – about 400,000 years old – and it formed when westward-flowing rivers were dammed by an upthrown crustal block. The lake’s shallowness, its limited river inflow, and its large surface area compared to its volume make it vulnerable to the effects of climate changes. Jinja , Uganda Since the 1900s, Lake Victoria ferries have been an important means of transport between Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. The main ports on the lake are Kisumu, Mwanza, Bukoba, Entebbe, Port Bell and Jinja. Until Kenyan independence in 1963, the fastest and most modern ferry, MV Victoria, was designated a Royal Mail Ship.

In 1966, train ferry services between Kenya and Tanzania were established with the introduction of MV Uhuru and MV Umoja. The ferry MV Bukoba sank in the lake on May 21, 1996 with a loss of between 800 and 1,000 lives, making it one of Africa’s worst maritime disasters. The Lake Victoria basin is one of the most densely populated rural areas in the world. Its shores are dotted with cities and towns, including Kisumu, Kisii, and Homa Bay in Kenya; Kampala, Jinja, and Entebbe in Uganda; and Bukoba, Mwanza and Msoma in Tanzania. These cities and towns also are home to many factories that discharge their waste directly into the lake and its influent rivers. These urban areas also discharge raw sewage into the river, increasing its eutrophication that in turn is helping to sustain the invasive water hyacinth. The Water hyacinth has become a major invasive plant species in Lake Victoria.

The release of large amounts of untreated wastewater (sewage), agricultural and industrial runoff directly into Lake Victoria over the past 30 years, has greatly increased the nutrient levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in the lake triggering massive growth of exotic Water hyacinth, which colonised the lake in the late 1990’s”. This invasive weed creates anoxic (total depletion of oxygen levels) conditions in the lake inhibiting decomposing plant material, raising toxicity and disease levels to both fish and people. At the same time the plant’s mat or “web” creates a barrier for boats and ferries to maneuver, impedes access to the shoreline, interferes with hydroelectric power generation, and blocks the intake of water for industries. On the flip side, Water hyacinth mats can potentially have a positive effect on fish life in that they create a barrier to overfishing and allow for fish growth, there has even been the reappearance of some fish species thought to have been extinct in recent years. Growth of the Water hyacinth in Lake Victoria has been tracked since 1993, reaching its maxima biomass in 1997 and then declining again by the end of 2001.

Lake Victoria - YouTube Lake Victoria Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Aug 21, 2014 Lake Victoria (Nam Lolwe in Luo; "Nalubaale" in Luganda; Victoria Nyanza in Bantu ) is one of the African Great Lakes. The lake was named after Queen Victoria by the explorer John Hanning Speke, who was the first European to discover it. Speke accomplished this in 1858, while on an expedition with Richard Francis Burton to locate the source of the Nile River. With a surface area of 68,800 square kilometres (26,600 sq mi), Lake Victoria is Africa's largest lake by area, and is also the largest tropical lake in the world. Lake Victoria is the world's 2nd largest freshwater lake by surface area; only Lake Superior in North America is larger.

In terms of its volume, Lake Victoria is the world's ninth largest continental lake, and it contains about 2,750 cubic kilometers (2.2 billion acre-feet) of water. This video is targeted to blind users. Attribution: Article text available under CC-BY-SA Creative Commons image source in video Category BBC - History - Historic Figures: John Hanning Speke (1827 - 1864) z John Hanning Speke © >Speke was an English explorer and the first European to reach Lake Victoria in east Africa, which he correctly identified as the long-sought source of the Nile. John Hanning Speke was born on 4 May 1827 in Bideford in Devon. He was commissioned into the British army in 1844 and posted to India where he served in the Punjab and travelled in the Himalayas and Tibet. In April 1855, as part of Richard Burton's expedition to explore Somaliland, Speke was severely wounded in an attack by the Somalis. Invalided home, he volunteered for the Crimea and served during the war with a regiment of Turks.

In December 1856, Speke accepted an invitation from Burton to join an expedition to search for the reported great lakes in east central Africa and, particularly, to try and find Lake Nyassa, said to be the origin of the Nile. They left Zanzibar in June 1857 and, after exploring the East African coast for six months to find the best route inland, became the first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika in February 1858. During the return trip, Speke left Burton, who was unwell, and struck out northward alone. In July he found a great lake which he named in honour of Queen Victoria. Speke's theory that the lake was the source of Nile was rejected by Burton - beginning a bitter public dispute between the two men. However, the Royal Geographical Society, which had sponsored the expedition, honoured Speke for his exploits and commissioned a second expedition in 1860 to resolve the dispute. Speke and Captain James Grant mapped a portion of Lake Victoria. In July 1862, Speke, unaccompanied by Grant, found the Nile's exit from the lake and named it Ripon Falls.

The party then tried to follow the river's course, but an outbreak of tribal warfare required them to change their route. On his return to England, Speke was greeted with enthusiasm and published 'Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile' (1863). Yet Burton and others remained unconvinced. On 15 September 1864, shortly before Speke and Burton were to debate the subject publicly, Speke was killed by his own gun while hunting. It remains uncertain whether it was an accident or suicide. Lake Victoria's Falling Waters : Feature Articles by Holli Riebeek· design by Robert Simmon· March 13, 2006 The caravan…began winding up a long but gradually inclined hill until it reached its summit, when the vast expanse of the pale-blue waters of the N’yanza burst suddenly upon my gaze. It was early morning. The distant sea-line of the north horizon was defined in the calm atmosphere between the north and west points of the compass; but even this did not afford me any idea of the breadth of the lake….This view was one which, even in a well-known and explored country, would have arrested the traveller by its peaceful beauty.

—John Hanning Speke, August 3, 1858. Though pastoral when British explorer John Hanning Speke became the first European to explore its shores, today, Lake Victoria in East Africa is one of the most populous regions in the world. The lake provides food, transport, and electricity to more than 30 million people, but its resources are limited. Despite its impressive size—it’s the third-largest lake in the world—Lake Victoria is shallow, resembling, in Speke’s words, “the temporary deposit of a vast flood overspreading a large flat surface.” Until the Owens Falls Dam began to regulate water levels from the lake’s only outlet in 1954, the amount of water in the lake jumped drastically from year to year depending on rainfall. Though water levels continued to vary after the dam was built, they remained more than 11.9 meters above a gauge in Jinja, Uganda. But in early 2006, the Jason-1 satellite revealed that Lake Victoria had reached lows not seen since well before the dam was built. Sunset over Speke Bay, Lake Victoria.

(Photograph copyright Hartmut Ulrich.) The dramatic drop in water levels at Lake Victoria was revealed during routine monitoring conducted by the Global Reservoir and Lake Monitor Project, a partnership between NASA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). “It’s a general practice [in crop monitoring] to look at the water supply, and one of the tools to do that is to look at reservoir heights. Reservoirs show how much long-term water storage is available,” says Curt Reynolds, an agricultural analyst and hydrologist who monitors crop conditions in Africa for the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. But water-level data are not always easy to obtain through on-site measurements: the lakes may be hard to get to, gauges can be inaccurate, or local governments may not want to share that information. The Foreign Agricultural Service monitors lakes and reservoirs with the radar altimeter on the Jason-1 satellite, operated jointly by NASA and the Centre National d’Etudes Sptiales (CNES), the French space agency. “Jason-1 emits microwave pulses towards the Earth’s surface,” says Charon Birkett, the University of Maryland researcher that heads up the team that prepares data for the Foreign Agricultural Service.

The water height influences how long it takes the microwave “echo” to return to the satellite. “Lake Victoria is such a big lake that you get lots of echoes as the satellite goes across it,” says Birkett. As a result, the water-level measurements are accurate to within 3-5 centimeters. “Considering that Jason is 1,300 kilometers up there, that’s pretty good,” Birkett adds. The accuracy means that analysts like Reynolds can use Jason-1 data—data that are immediately available on a weekly basis compared to less frequent and less timely ground measurements—to extend a lake’s historical record collected from gauges. “The fit [agreement] is good between the radar altimeter and the gauge measurements,” says Reynolds. A longer record provides the perspective that resource managers need to understand what current changes in water levels mean for a particular lake and the surrounding region. Lake Victoria is located in East Africa, bordered by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. (Map by Robert Simmon and Reto Stöckli.) In the case of Lake Victoria, the story told by water levels is complicated. Thirteen years of measurements taken by satellite radar altimeters combined with historical ground measurements reveal Lake Victoria’s volatile past.

In the 105-year history of accurate measurements on the lake, water levels have fluctuated widely. In 1961 and 1962, for example, heavy rain drove water levels up by an astounding 2 meters. Since that time, levels above the gauge in Jinja, Uganda, stayed above 11.9 meters (about 1,134 meters above sea level) until December 2005. From that point, water levels dropped to alarmingly low levels and were not expected to stop dropping until the April rains arrived. Drought and Dams Water levels in Lake Victoria were unusually high from the mid-1960s until December 2005. Since then water levels dropped roughly a meter, threatening the communities that rely on the lake for water, work, power, and food. Lake level data from the TOPEX-Poseidon and Jason-1 satellites (red) augment gauge data at Jinja, Uganda (black). (Graph by Robert Simmon, based on data provided by the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. ) How Big Is Lake Victoria? - WorldAtlas.com How Big Is Lake Victoria?

Lake Victoria in Africa is the world's largest tropical lake at 69,485 square kilometers in surface area. Birds sit atop the rocks along the Lake Victoria shoreline in Tanzania's Rubondo Island National Park. 5. Description With a surface area of 69,485 square kilometers, Lake Victoria is Africa’s largest lake, and the world’s largest tropical lake, according to Diversity Inland Waters (DIW). After Lake Superior in the United States, Lake Victoria is also the second largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area. It’s shared by the three east African countries of Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya. At 51 percent, Tanzania claims the biggest share of the lake’s waters, followed by Uganda at 43 percent, and Kenya at 6 percent. In the Kenyan portion, the lake is in the western region of that same country. Lake Victoria’s maximum depth is estimated to reach 84 meters, and the mean depth at 40 meters. The length of its shoreline is 3,450 kilometers in total.

The lake has a water retention capacity of 140 years, and a catchment area of 194,200 square kilometers, which extends into Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi and Rwanda, according to the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO). 4. Historical Role The lake was named after Queen Victoria of England, with the honor bestowed by British Army officer and explorer John Hanning Speke, who was the first European to discover it in 1858. Speke also proclaimed Lake Victoria as the source of the Nile River. That claim was backed up by Henry Morton Stanley, an explorer, soldier. and journalist. after he successfully circumnavigated the lake in 1875, according to an American University report. However, explorer Dr. Burkhart Waldecker, of Germany, in 1937 disputed Stanley and Speke, and claimed the Nile River's source is at a bubbling spring in what is now Burundi. Through Stanley, traders and soldiers in Britain learned of the importance of Lake Victoria, and they came to East Africa to see for themselves.

While in Kenya, these British colonialists decided to build a railway line from Mombasa to Lake Victoria, which was completed in 1902. The railway enabled the British government to move raw materials from landlocked Uganda, and transport processed goods from Britain to Uganda through Kenya’s Mombasa coast. The railway also helped reduce slave labor, which was then commonplace in East Africa, as initially slaves were used to transport these same goods that were now moving by rail. 3. Modern Significance Today, over 30 million people from the three East African countries bounding the lake's waters depend on Lake Victoria for their livelihoods and even survival. Fishing is the main economic activity for those living along its shores. Over 2 million people from the three countries combined work in the fisheries industry, according to the LVFO. Fish from Lake Victoria is annually part of the diets of nearly 22 million people, thereby helping reduce food insecurity in the region. Also, 75 percent of the Nile perch harvested from the lake is exported to Europe, the United States, and the Middle East, earning the three countries foreign exchange revenues.

The waters from Lake Victoria, like those of the Victoria-Nile River, are tapped into to produce hydroelectric power at Owen Falls, Uganda. The power plants at Owen Falls can generate 260 Megawatts of electric power, some of which is imported to Kenya. The Nile's waters that are sourced from the lake also support agricultural projects and tourism as far away as Sudan and Egypt. 2. Habitat and Biodiversity Prior to the introduction of Nile perch and Nile tilapia into these waters in the 1950s and 1960s, Lake Victoria had over 500 endemic fish species. The most dominant were the tilapiine and haplochromines, both of which were cichlid species, and these lived alongside catfish, clarias, synodontis, schilbes, protopterus, and labeos. Lake Victoria's indigenous fish species' populations were reduced after being preyed upon by the invasive Nile perch and Nile Tilapia, according to the LVFO. That has contributed to the extinction of about 200 fish species since 1960, according to World Lakes.

Lake Victoria's waters and immediately neighboring thickets serve as habitats for the Nile crocodile, African Rock python, mambas, cobras, and over 350 bird species. Mammals within the lake’s basin include the Sitatunga, oribis, Roan antelopes, hippopotamuses, Rothschild giraffes, and Jackson hartebeests. The dominant forms of vegetation in the Lake Victoria Basin varies across the three countries sharing it, and is comprised of dry forests and woodland in southern Tanzania, deciduous bush lands and thickets in northern Uganda, and dry, peripheral, semi-evergreen rainforests and scrub forests in eastern Kenya, according to a United Nations Habitat report. There are also swampy areas all around the lake’s margins. 1. Environmental Threats and Territorial Disputes In recent years, the excessive accumulation of nutrients in Lake Victoria has caused eutrophication, resulting in a hyacinth weed population explosion. As a result, the weed has interfered with breeding, water purification, fishing, and transport, and become a breeding haven for human diseases, according to DIW.

Eutrophication has also been cited by researchers as inducing losses of deep water oxygen levels, which began in the early 1960s. This loss of deep water oxygen could have also contributed to the annihilation of indigenous fish stocks, including certain endemic cichlids, in the 1980s. Furthermore, pollution due to urbanization around Lake Victoria is also still threatening its rich biodiversity. In Lake Victoria’s forest catchment areas, over 70 percent of the forest cover has been depleted, according to the World Wildlife Fund. All of those factors have caused the rivers flowing into the lake to carry large amounts of silt and nutrients that increase eutrophication further still. This page was last modified on June 6, 2016. On WorldAtlas.com John Hanning Speke (1827 - 1864) - Find A Grave Memorial Marlborough Wiltshire, England British Explorer. Born in Bideford, Devon county, England, in 1827, he was commissioned in the British Indian Army in 1844. During his service in the Punjab, he traveled extensively in the Himalayas and Tibet.

In April 1855, he was chosen by Sir Richard Francis Burton to replace a member of his expedition force who had fallen ill. During the mid to late 50's, he participated in several expeditions with Burton. In 1857 to 1858, they explored East Africa with the intention of locating the source of the Nile River. On July 30, 1858, Speke, on his own, located Lake Tanganyika, which he named Lake Victoria in honor of the Queen. He is credited with being the first European explorer to discover a source of the Nile River. He also supplied information to Samuel Baker and Florence von Sass which aided them in the discovery of Lake Albert as another source of the Nile River. With Captain James Grant, he returned to East Africa in 1860 to trace the route of the river and map the area. On July 28, 1862, he found the river's exit from the lake, naming it Ripon Falls. He and Burton disagreed about the lake being a source of the river and were scheduled to publicly debate the matter on September 15, 1864.

Speke, however, died that day in a hunting accident near Corsham, Wiltshire county, England. As he died from a gunshot wound from his own gun and he was an expert huntsman, there has been speculation that it was suicide instead of an accident. In 1868 his journal was published as "Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile" and was reprinted as recently as September 1997. Mount Speke in the Ruwenzori Range, Uganda, was named in his honor. (bio by: J.Sullivan) Victoria Nyanza and the Nile 1864 John Hanning Speke - Explorer (1827-1864) Speke was the first European, while on an expedition with Richard Burton to East Africa in 1858, to discover Lake Victoria. On a subsequent journey with James Grant in 1862, he confirmed its northern outlet as the source of the Nile. This memorial was sponsored by Sir Roderick Murchison, President of the Royal Geographical Society. The cost was met by public subscription. It was designed by Philip Hardwick, R.A.

It is constructed from red granite and was quarried and made in Aberdeen, Scotland. The memorial was erected in 1866. Speke had died two years earlier, killed in a shooting accident by his own gun immediately before a debate with Burton about the source of the Nile. This plaque was erected in 1995 by The Friends of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Note: He is buried at Saint Andrew at Dowlish Wake in Ilminster, Somerset, England . This memorial is for the cenotaph at Kensington Gardens in Greater London. Jinja, Uganda - Travel Photos by Galen R Frysinger, Sheboygan, Wisconsin monument to John Hanning Speke the mutilated memorial plaque It is drained by the Nile River, and its chief affluent is the Kagera River. While on an expedition to discover the Nile in 1858, British explorer John Hanning Speke became the first European to sight Lake Victoria. It was circumnavigated by Sir Henry Morton Stanley in 1875, and subsequently explored by him and others. Speke named the lake for Britain's Queen Victoria; the lake was formerly known to the Arabs as Ukerewe.

net to prevent water hyacinth from entering the Nile Lake Victoria is economically important to the surrounding region, which has one of Africa's highest population densities. Fishing and boat building are the most significant economic activities. At the city of Jinja, Uganda, where the Victoria Nile flows out of the lake, the Owen Falls Dam was completed in 1954. The dam turned the lake into a large reservoir that produces hydroelectricity for the surrounding area. The dam also submerged Ripon Falls, the dramatic cataract flowing from the lake, which Speke named in 1862. The vegetation and flowers by post dam completion sprouted from a very rich soil bed along the lake shores. fishermen on the Nile their boats During World War I Lake Victoria was the scene of British and German military operations in 1915 and 1916, with both sides arming small steamers for raiding purposes. In June 1916 British forces captured Ukerewe Island, the largest island in Lake Victoria. All hostilities ended on Lake Victoria the following month, when the Tanzanian city of Mwanza fell to the British.

Text from Microsoft Encarta site of the Ripon Falls, before the building of the Owen Falls power producing dam, which was completed in 1954 offering a boat ride on the Nile John Hanning Speke | British explorer | Britannica.com John Hanning Speke Sir Richard Burton John Hanning Speke, (born May 3, 1827, Bideford , Devon , Eng.—died Sept. 15, 1864, near Corsham, Wiltshire ), British explorer who was the first European to reach Lake Victoria in East Africa , which he correctly identified as a source of the Nile. Speke Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman & Co. Ltd. Commissioned in the British Indian Army in 1844, he served in the Punjab and travelled in the Himalayas and Tibet . In April 1855, as a member of Richard Burton’s party attempting to explore Somaliland, Speke was severely wounded in an attack by the Somalis that broke up the expedition. In December 1856 he rejoined Burton on the island of Zanzibar.

Their intention was to find a great lake said to lie in the heart of Africa and to be the origin of the Nile. After exploring the East African coast for six months to find the best route inland, the two men became the first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika (February 1858). During the return trip, Speke left Burton and struck out northward alone. On July 30 he reached the great lake, which he named in honour of Queen Victoria. Speke’s conclusion about the lake as a Nile source was rejected by Burton and was disputed by many in England , but the Royal Geographical Society , which had sponsored the expedition, honoured Speke for his exploits. On a second expedition (1860), he and James Grant mapped a portion of Lake Victoria. On July 28, 1862, Speke, not accompanied by Grant for this portion of the journey, found the Nile’s exit from the lake and named it Ripon Falls . The party then tried to follow the river’s course, but an outbreak of tribal warfare required them to change their route.

In February 1863 they reached Gondokoro in the southern Sudan , where they met the Nile explorers Samuel Baker and Florence von Sass (who later became Baker’s wife). Speke and Grant told them of another lake said to lie west of Lake Victoria. This information helped the Baker party to locate another Nile source, Lake Albert . Speke’s claim to have found the Nile source was again challenged in England, and, on the day he was to debate the subject publicly with Richard Burton , he was killed by his own gun while hunting. Accounts of his explorations were published in 1863 and 1864. Learn More in these related articles: Uganda: Unearthing John Speke's Lost Seed - allAfrica.com Uganda: Unearthing John Speke's Lost Seed analysis By Joseph Batte ON August 3, 1858, John Hanning Speke became the first European to discover Lake Victoria. While he was here, he enjoyed the company of a Ugandan woman who bore him a son. That boy's grandson gave birth to a whole clan of Speke's descendants. Joseph Batte found them living in the western Uganda district of Fort Portal.

Sadly, their attempts to trace their ancestry could not yield any fruits. IN 1856, John Hanning Speke, a dashing young man aged 31, and Richard Burton, a rootless Anglo-Irish intellectual notorious for his interest in pornography, were commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society to come to East Africa and find the Great Lakes, which were rumoured to exist in the centre of the continent and look for the Source of the Nile. On August 3, 1858, Speke became the first European to see what is now called Lake Victoria. But it seems he did more than just find the Source of the Nile. He had a liaison with a local woman in Uganda who bore him a son, but he did not know it. The son gave birth to another son, who gave birth to a whole clan of Speke's descendants who live in Fort Portal in western Uganda. They make up about 500 Ugandans of British ancestry. The hunt starts My search for the Speke family in Fort Portal proved to be harder than I thought. Firstly, very few people knew of their existence.

Not even the gentleman I bumped into in the streets who, I learnt later, was the Lord Mayor of the town, knew anything about them! When I asked him about the Spekes' presence in Fort Portal, he was shocked: "What! You mean the descendants of that famous English explorer have been living with us here in Fort Portal? I did not know that at all." A special hire taxi driver, who claimed he knew where the Spekes lived, grabbed the opportunity to make some quick money. He took me to the wrong home, deep in the village and still insisted I pay him because he had burnt his fuel. "These are bad days, you know," he said. Frustrated, I was about to give up the search for the descendants of Speke, pack my bags and return to Kampala when suddenly a thought came to me: why not enquire from the large half-cast community in Fort Portal. Surely, somebody should know the Spekes as they are one of 'them.' My hunch proved right. A mixed blood boda boda cyclist I met said he knew the grandson of Speke who was eking out a living as a boda boda cyclist in Fort Portal.

"He is called Bright Christopher." Bright turned out to be beefy, a young man in his mid-20s with a chocolate-brown skin complexion that makes him look more 'black' than 'white.' The only features that reveal he is of mixed parentage are his curly hair and thin pointed nose. Was he really one of them? "I will take you to the Speke family because I'm related to them," he said. As if reading my mind, he added: "Speke is my grandfather; I'm a son to one of his daughters. My father is black and that's why I'm not as white as they are." My anxiety was replaced with relief. After a long search, finally I was going to meet the descendants of this famous English explorer. I jumped onto Bright's boda boda and we took the Bundibugyo Road. After about two kilometres, we branched off and sped into the countryside. As we hurtled across the fields, I saw all the ingredients needed for a tailor-made holiday of a lifetime for tourists, magical breathtaking scenic views - rolling hills, banana plantations and the ever cheerful people of Toro - speed past us. The looming Rwenzori Mountain ranges kept drawing nearer and nearer.

I kept wondering; what does Speke look like? Is he really the one? Would he be willing to talk to me about his famous ancestor? An hour or two later, lo and behold! There it was: the Speke family house! It is a red tin-roofed structure whose architecture dates back to the 1950s. It is situated in Nyakitojjo village, Kiguma parish in Bukuku sub-county and sits on a vast piece of land, surrounded by a big banana plantation. The Spekes are good farmers, I noted. Bright told me to wait and then disappeared to the back of the house to announce my arrival. After a short time, the door cracked open and an elderly woman burst out and hugged me. Lineage I did not want to sound rude but I did ask if he really is a descendant of John Hanning Speke, the great explorer. "Yes he is," his wife replied firmly. "The son of Speke gave birth to a son who in turn gave birth to him. He told me that his mother was a Musoga called Mutesi.

She died while giving birth to him." "He was initially nursed by his mother's relatives in Busoga, but word reached the white community and a man called Switzer, who knew about his Speke ancestry, adopted him as his son. Switzer took him to Kenya where he worked as a district commissioner. While there, he treated him as his own child and even sent him to school. He eventually qualified as a book keeper." "On return to Uganda, Switzer retired to his tea estate situated in Rwateera where he eventually died. His family is still there. Before he died, he told my husband about his ancestry - that he (Switzer) was just his adoptive father. He was a biological grandson of John Hanning Speke." Who was John Hanning Speke? John Hanning Speke was born in 1827 and died in 1864. He was a captain in Her Majesty's Indian Army and was among the greatest British explorers of the Victorian era. Speke accompanied Richard Burton during his 1856-1859 expedition across Central Africa and on August 3, 1858 became the first white to discover Lake Victoria.

This, he felt convinced, was the principal source of the White Nile - whose discovery had been, for centuries, the most coveted objective of African exploration. Determined to prove his intuitive claim, Speke returned to Lake Victoria in 1860-1863, accompanied by James Augustus Grant (1827-1892). In July 1862, though he still lacked evidence connecting the Nile with Lake Victoria, Speke declared 'the Nile is settled'. More than a decade after Speke's death, Henry Morton Stanley circumnavigated Lake Victoria in 1875 and verified Speke's claim. Discovering the Nile In his book the Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, Speke reveals that he got confirmation of the existence of the Nile from two people, a Hindi merchant, called Musa and a black slave who had been to Usoga (Busoga) and called the river Kivira, (Kiyira, a name that is still in usage today), describing it as being much broader, deeper, and stronger in its current than the Katonga and Kitangulé rivers.

As he told it, more appropriately to the world in his narrative: "When the vast expanse of the pale-blue waters of the N'yanza burst suddenly upon my view,...I no longer felt any doubt that the lake at my feet gave birth to that interesting river, the source of which has been the subject of so much speculation, and the object of so many explorers." When he came to Uganda (Buganda) Speke was surprised at the level of civilisation and organisation he found and the magnificence of the Kabaka's palace. He gave gifts to the king, including several guns. They included a Whitworth Pistol, which became an object of morbid curiosity to the king. Speke stayed for six months. Attempts to trace family Deep down there is this empty feeling and pain of not knowing who they are. "It really hurts. Who are we? Where did our ancestors come from? Don't we have any relatives who are still living? Are we alone in the world or not?" asks Molly Harriet rhetorically. "Our father tried as much as possible to trace the Speke family in England. I remember he also sent many people, especially his white friends to research.

He made some progress, but along the way he hit a dead end and gave up." "He gathered us and said: 'my children, I am defeated in my search for our ancestors. You are all I have; for now let us assume there is nobody out there who is related to us.' "We have been a target of ridicule from the locals here." "Muli buzungu bunaku obutalina sente. Tebamanyi beewabwe. (You are poor whites who neither have money nor know your roots)," they say. "The locals here have this belief that all whites are rich. I wish I knew who my (relatives) are." "I would tell them what is on my heart," says Molly Harriet in a voice thick with emotion. Landmarks named after Speke in Uganda Mount Speke: This lies in the Ruwenzori Mountains National Park and is the second highest peak in this range. Together with Mount Stanley and Mount Baker (Rwenzoris), it forms a triangle enclosing the upper Bujuku Valley. Speke Group of Hotels: This include the Speke Hotel, the first and oldest hotel in Uganda, which was built in 1920s during the British colonial times.

Speke Road: It is one of the shortest roads in Kampala. It stretches from the Nile Avenue roundabout near Imperial Hotel and Standard Chartered Bank, the General Post Office, down to Jinja Road. Speke's Gazelle: The smallest of the gazelle species, it is an endangered species confined to the Horn of Africa where it inhabits stony brush, grass steppes, and semi deserts. Copyright © 2011 New Vision. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media ( allAfrica.com ). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. AllAfrica publishes around 700 reports a day from more than 140 news organizations and over 500 other institutions and individuals , representing a diversity of positions on every topic. We publish news and views ranging from vigorous opponents of governments to government publications and spokespersons. Publishers named above each report are responsible for their own content, which AllAfrica does not have the legal right to edit or correct. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica . To address comments or complaints, please Contact us .

Question: Which explorer, in 1858, was the first European to disciver Lake Victoria?
Answer: John Speke